Wesley's STCCG card of the day #302

Hi, folks,

I don't really know why I'm still around after Tebok has discovered the unbeatable deck (I had a similar idea, though mine was not as focused), and I discovered the deck to beat it (and it's just as boring :-( ). After all, we might as well now ditch most of our cards...

But not this one which plays a role in both of them:

Q-FLASH

Doorway, common QC.
Place one atop Q-Continuum side deck during the seed phase. Q-Continuum is now open and in play. OR seed under any mission like a dilemma. Any crew or Away Team encountering this Q-Flash must experience X cards from opponent's Q-Continuum, where X= the number of personnel present. OR Stock in deck and play to nullify one [Q] icon card.

Not just a card, but a concept. Until now we had Dilemmas. They had one thing in common (except for The Higher... which was just a penalty): The more personnel you had present the less they did to you. Now this is the exact opposite: The more personnel you have present, the bigger the OUCH you're gonna take. So the old strategy of "I take what I have and throw it at the problems" has just experienced a nasty counter. The card in itself has little use. It marks something. Great. Only the third use (nullify one [Q] card) is something it can do by itself. And this function is usually much better performed by a Kevin, an Amanda or a Q2, cards that are more versatile than a nullifier for Q-cards only. But there's a little extra power I'll touch later which might make it sensible to use the flash for this purpose anyway...

So the true power is not in the card itself (yeah, we had this before: AU doorway) but in the options it presents. And thus there should be a little review about Q-Continuum cards in general before I pick out some of them for closer examination.

Most Q-cards don't do much just by themselves. They have a minor nuisance effect, can be overcome or fizzle entirely because some required condition just cannot be met (e.g. Dr. Q or Wesley gets the Point). But they don't count as a card. They count as 1 Xth of a card. After all, for the price of one seed card, your opponent is going to hit X Q-cards which count nowhere, not for your 60-card limit, not for seed card percentage, not for anything else. Except for the size of your binder ;-)

So think BIG when seeding a Q-Continuum. 8 to 12 cards for each Flash you want to seed is a good start. And remember duplicates are discarded, so seed enough different cards. Maybe these figures will help you:

# of flashes    #Q-cards: Total   Different # copies of each card
1                          8-12    6-12     1 - 2
2                         16-24    9-18     1 - 3
3                         24-36   12-21     1 - 3
4                         32-48   15-24     1 - 4
5                         32-60   15-26     2 - 4
6                         32-72   15-28     2 - 5

Note that the minima do not increase after 4 flashes, as even with a Q's planet somewhere your opponent will rarely have to attempt more than 4 missions.

Some Q-cards also have a weakness: "Until any Q-Flash". This means you will have to be judicious about the use of this card when you want to keep them in play or get rid of them. If the former, make sure you have several of them in your continuum so that every new flash will also trigger a new copy of the card (even to the point of exceeding the maxima above). If you'd rather get rid of the cards, you have several possibilities:

Redshirt a mission under which you suspect a Q-Flash
Nullify them
Nullify any Q-card that has no "until any Q-Flash" on it. The ones with that designation will follow and you get several cards for one.

Last thing: A cute bluff. Build a huge Q-Continuum. About 60 cards. Then, seed no Q-Flashes. But hefty Dilemmas instead. Your opponent will go in with minimum crew fearing your Q-Flashes. Which means he'll go out with no crew at all ;-)

Favorite combo(s):

Didn't experiment with this enough to put anything really great here.

No ratinx today (again), I have received a few but I'll stick to what I said; it might have discouraged a few raters from sending something and I don't want to be unfair here. But anything I received was really high.

Please direct all email concerning card of the day to: crusher@kiss.de

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With all back issues from #1 up to today !

LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

"A couple of lightyears can't keep good friends apart"